Grey water system for tiny house in Canada

Hello fellow Permies,
I recently moved in to a tiny house on wheels in Ontario, Canada. I need to get my plumbing finished and grey water system set up before the cold season sets in.
I'm looking for information for a grey water system that isn't too expensive that will work in zone 5b where we have long periods of freezing temperatures and frozen ground for 3months.
I live alone and will have kitchen sink water and short showers. I use all natural products but there will be a little bit if grease from cooking. The land has a slight slope and I have a large field beside me.
If anyone has experience with this I'd love some advice or knows of a good website, book or video for a winter proof grey water system. Thanks so much ☮️🌊😊

Our "system" is to collect the grey water inside and chuck it on a garden full of water-loving plants outside the door of the house. Fully freeze proof and super cheap😉

We started with the 5gal bucket under the sink and found the drain got too mucky and gross. So now our sink is a giant stainless mixing bowl that we empty after each use. Lots of houseplants can handle grey water, so we water them with it, too.

We shower outside year round, but it would be easy enough to stand in a tub while you shower inside to collect the water, especially if they're short showers.

What amount is 'too expensive" ?
If you modify the cooking, so that grease etc can be kept out of the sink it will help a lot.
Pour fats and grease into separate tin, soak the same up with newspaper and wipe pans etc after cooking but before washing.
Its helps a lot.

I highly recommend Art Ludwig's book and website for greywater systems.

At our off-grid school in the Indian Himalayas, we've been operating with extremely low-tech greywater system for some 20 or 25 years. It's equivalent of zone 5 or 6, and we've got 6 weeks of pond-hockey, if that gives you an idea of the climate. I've done the same at my house for the past 3 winters.

Burying pipes 3 feet underground is sufficient here to keep pipes from freezing. Then the issue is to make sure there's enough drop to keep water from pooling in the pipe, and enough drop-off to keep water from pooling and freezing and coming up to the level of the outlet (That turned out to be a problem at my house, where there was less slope).

Our school had a nice slope, so the outlet from the kitchen and bathroom drains could be buried 3 feet at least, and then come out to daylight at a canal that irrigates trees. The willow trees have been loving it and thriving for 25 years. We don't try to remove oil, reduce soap, or force our teenagers to abstain from the icky-gick "products" that they use. Letting the water straight out to daylight allows the topsoil organisms to deal with and digest everything. However, in summer, it can sometimes stink like greywater. In winter, it freezes over the surface, but our topography makes that a non problem. At my house, that was a problem when I had the outlet in a hollow covered with a piece of plywood. It froze up in layers and blocked the pipe late one winter; I had to remove the cover and break it with a shovel. The next year I left the cover off and made sure the hollow's outlet was well cleared, and then I think the occasional hot shower or bathtub draining kept it clear.

Ana Edey of Solviva fame on Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts made an excellent underground contained toilet thingie that would be great for greywater if you want to put it all underground. Her toilet drains into a box in the ground full of wood chips and compost worms, with an insulated top. That in turn drains down to a perforated pipe laid in a trench of gravel protected with weed barrier cloth, that irrigates some pine trees. Pine trees don't have invasive roots, but many types of trees will aggressively get up into and block buried perforated pipes.

Thanks for your reply Jane. That's the set up I'm working with now and it does work no problem for this time of the year.  I was thinking about building an outdoor shower but I can't imagine using it in the 🥶 winter! 🥶
Im concerned about pooling water turning in to an ice slick. I'm renting a piece of property on a friend's farm So i feel I need to be conscious of how the set up looks nd functions.

Thanks John,
If I eat meat I try to cook it on the bbq so I don't have as much grease to deal with and have been wiping my plates before I wash them and it definitely helps.
I will be living here temporarily, hopefully one year until I can find my own land or community to move to, so I don't mind sinking money in to the plumbing and pipes I can take with me but I don't want to spend a bunch on having a trench dug and burying pipes or filtration tanks underground

Thanks Rebecca
That sounds like a good set up. I do have a good slope here but no trees on this side just a field. I'm wondering about making a type of bog garden or little wetland garden or a perforated pipe to try to disperse the water. I'm probably over thinking it and as a single person won't be using a ton of water so ground will be able to cope.  
Hopefully running some hot water through and having a slope will be enough to keep the water moving and not freezing up in the pipes

Pandora said, "so I don't mind sinking money in to the plumbing and pipes I can take with me but I don't want to spend a bunch on having a trench dug and burying pipes or filtration tanks underground

What is your solution for black water?  Does it go into a tank that has to be dumped/pumped or into a septic system?

If I were in this situation, I would drain the greywater into buckets and pour this into the areas I want to water or temporarily pipe it to those areas.

Since you are concerned about water pooling and freezing in winter, if I were in that situation, I would pour the water from the buckets into the black water system or remove the temporary pipes in winter and send the water to the black water system.

I have a composting toilet so I don't have to deal with black water in that respect
The urine from the toilet is currently diverted to a holding bucket which I dump ever few days. I'm not sure if I should have the urine go in with my grey water system or have a seperate location for the urine to go.n  I'm thinking it's better to have it be diluted with the grey water but it may still be too concentrated to not be harmful to any plant life and soil at the other end of the pipe

I noticed that you might not be on wheels anymore but there's a way to feed plants and run out of urine through a recirculating system innoculaterd with kombucha or certain molds that grow on sweet water, then couple it with wetland species or vetiver on barrels/planters that mimick wicking beds.

It is important to maintain aeration of the urine/grey water/rainwater to avoid odours..
The hardest part will be adjusting the system to -40 weather if an engine block heater or passive solar cannot be used

Zeus forero wrote:I noticed that you might not be on wheels anymore but there's a way to feed plants and run out of urine through a recirculating system inoculated with kombucha or certain molds that grow on sweet water, then couple it with wetland species or vetiver on barrels/planters that mimic wicking beds.

What do you mean by a recirculating system? Are you using a pump and if so, is that just for aeration?

A diagram would really help me. We are extremely wet in the winter and I don't want the urine either running off the surface, or soaking in below the active biological level, as both of those would turn an asset into a liability.

The aeration stage is important and it should have a dedicated air pump because the scooby culture and the plants will struggle if it stops for long periods of time(longer than a week)

The recirculation system is meant to keep the plants oxygenated and the mechanical components needed will vary depending on how you can or want place your tanks and the wicking bed. However I recommend a gravity system that uses pumps and float valves for maintenanc only, but it could be a fully mechanical system.

The section of the wicking bed that holds the waste has to be water and puncture proof. I recommend plastic drums or totes as holding tanks and wicking bed.

The plants could also be set up other alternative hydroponic aystems
Up north it will be worthwhile to make a small greenhouse to maintain the water consumption of the plants with a lined metal drum and engine block or submersible heater. Without a greenhouse ~200gal of storage per person will be needed and the wicking beds could be isolated if you don't want to use species like willow



Waste water > aeration tank 1> innoculation tank > aeration tank 2 > wicking beds >>|
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If you decide to discharge to a subsurface system just put a little grease trap or baffled box upstream of it to separate any grease/oil/solids that make it down the drain. You should be able to find a frost depth map somewhere to get an indication of how deep you need to bury your pipes...maybe check the local water utility provider construction specifications if nothing else. I think it was already mentioned, you could always just discharge to the surface since it sounds like you have sufficient grade...maybe just put some stone below and around your pipe where it daylights to keep it drained and animals out, essentially a level spreader. see https://share.google/images/afeNJyCSnIsdYMkB8